La Presse’s workers have also ratified a new collective agreement. The agreement is retroactive to 2016 and lasts until 2021, with a salary freeze until 2020 and a 1% increase the final year. The employee pension plan (the one that began when La Presse became a non-profit) will transition to a targeted benefit structure. The union will also have some access to La Presse’s financial information once a year, and employees will get an abridged version of that.

The CRTC has begun the process for determining whether it should issue a call for applications for new radio stations in three markets, after receiving applications for them. Others who may be interested in filing competing applications have a month to manifest their interest. The applications are:

Bell Media has announced its plans for the Super Bowl broadcast on Sunday. It’s the third year that the broadcast is a special exception to simultaneous substitution rules, allowing viewers to choose between the Canadian and American broadcast (the recently signed USMCA trade deal calls for that exception to end, but the agreement has not been ratified yet by the Canadian government and neither the CRTC nor the courts are willing to jump the gun):

Rather than a special airing of a big U.S. drama or even a Canadian premiere, CTV will air a special Jay and Dan Super Bowl recap special after the game

The game will once again be “super simulcast” on CTV, CTV2 and TSN. CTV’s coverage begins at noon.

U.S. Super Bowl ads on the BigGameAds.ca website, which Bell is putting a bit more effort into this year (though it’s still just a bunch of links to YouTube videos).

No word in the announcement of any watch-to-win contests to keep viewers on the Canadian broadcast during the game itself (remember that the simsub exception applies only from kickoff to the final whistle — pregame and postgame shows remain substituted).